Intel Xserve RAID Support?

I couldn't find any mention of RAID support on the new intel xserves. Does any have any info on them. I was hoping this generation would have embedded support (no more cards).

My first batch of Intel XServes have shipped from
China. Once they get here I'll be able to tell
whether the drive bays use the daughtercard/cable
setup that facilitates the Hardware RAID Card as used
in the XServe G5. They're due in on Monday...
You lucky (and brave early adopter) guy. It would be interesting to know the controller chip on the motherboard, if System Profiler provides that information. There are a few (non-Windows) RAID vendors out there who are doing RAID 5 via driver with certain controller chipsets. Perhaps that's a path. If done right, and with journaling, it could work and be reliable. It would be a processor hit, but with all of those cores floating around, it might be doable as a low-end alternative to an XRAID.
Russ
Xserve G5 2.0 GHz 2 GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.8) Apple Hardware RAID, ATTO UL4D, Exabyte VXA-2 1x10 1u

Similar Messages

Does xserve raid support path failover?

I have two questions about the system.
1 Does the Xserve Raid support path failover from the upper to lower controller? Primarily, if you have IO running on a lun that is on the upper controller and the path to that controller is removed, will the IO get shifted to the lower controller? If so, is there a certain configuration setting that must be applied. I
n reading up on Xserve, it appears that they are independent controllers. The user guide states that when a controller module is out of the system (or failed) the drive modules controlled by that card are not active.
2 Is there a way to determine which drive(s) in the system are the spares or stand by?

Hi Davel,
1) No. The controllers are independent. If a RAID controller fails, or a cable fails, or a switch or HBA that a RAID controller is connected to fails, the LUN goes offline until the problem is fixed.
2) Yes. Just look in RAID Admin. Any drive that is not part of a RAID set will automatically be used as a hot spare. So if you have a 6 disk RAID 5, on a side with 7 disks, you have one hot spare. If you have a 5 disk RAID 5, with two drives that aren't used, you have 2 hot spares.
Note, on #2, hot spares are "per side," because again the RAID controllers are independent. So what I most commonly see for additional protection is a 6-disk RAID 5 + 1 hot spare, per side. This gives about 5 TB of usable capacity, on a 7 TB Xserve RAID.

G4 Mac OSX 10.4 server with RAID & sharepoints - Intel Xserve & RAID?

Hey all,
so we need to migrate our G4 Power Mac running Mac OSX 10.4 server with about 60 user accounts and a RAID with about 50 sharepoints to a brand new Intel Xserve with 10.4 server and a brand new RAID.
My plan for the server part of things is to put the new server online with the old one still running, make the new one a replica of the old one, then take the old one offline and promote the new one to a master.
But what to do about the sharepoints and several terabytes of data? Is there any way to do this except manually copying the data and re-creating all the sharepoints? That wouldn't be the complete end of the world as long as all the accounts/groups come across via the replication, but it'd be nice if there's a smart way to do this.
Thanks for your help!

Never tried the replica promote so I can't say that it will work. The way I migrated from 10.4 to new hardware 10.4 server was to set the new server up with exactly the same setup, DNS, IP and so on. This requires the old server be off the network for a bit. Once it was running I would have a backup of the LDAP/OD info made directly from the old server in Server Admin. Import this on the new server and all users and passwords are back in place. Now as for the share points and the data the best thing to do is to attach the old RAID to the new unit first. Hopefully you have a way to have both RAIDs connected at the same time to the new unit since that would be best.
In the interest of downtime you could immediately add the share points back in to WGM pointing to the old RAID drives. This gives you the free time to migrated the data when you want to. Make sure you know the right settings for each protocols which you use for each share point (AFP, SMB, FTP, NFS).
Now that your up and running you can move data by whatever means you see fit to the new RAID keeping in mind you want to keep permissions in-tacked. There are many clone or sync option out there and you don't need to move all the share points at once.
The main reason I chose this method is it offers a fall back and no client reconfiguring. If something is not working on the new server you can simply plug the old RAID back to the old server and your up. Second is that if you try to run both server at the same time you would need to create a whole new identity for the new server (IP, DNS and so on). Migrate data via a Network (very slow) and reconfigure all clients to point at the new server. I've done this at least 10+ times at different locations and even before the easy 10.4 backup of LDAP/OD info. Making sure you had a clean LDAP was never so easy. All swap outs took less then an hour of down time with maybe 2 hour pre-swap setup. Data movement to a new RAID was not always the case but by using this method you can move data later which is the most time consuming process of the whole swap.

Old Apple xserve Raid 1.24 and New Intel Xserve

Guys
Quick question - i currently have an Apple G5 xserve setup with an apple xserve raid {1.24} as a file sharing server in my studio
ideally i am looking to get my xserve upgraded to the new intel version but would like to know if the old xserve raid would still be compatible with the new xserve?
any info would be super appreciated!
so7

Yes - it will work just fine. The only issue is that you'll need a new Fiber channel card for the Intel XServe since it only supports PCIe cards, not PCI-X used by the previous XServes.

Intel Xserve + Xserve RAID + SCSI

I have a requirement for an Intel Xserve system that I can connect an Xserve RAID and SCSI tape autoloader to. It seems that Apple won't let me configure a system with a SCSI card and a fibre channel card in it at the same time, and repeated phone calls to them have yielded precisely nothing (very disappointed with the lack of professionalism and knowledge displayed by the Apple sales and tech staff on this matter).
Can I have such a configuration? It seems that I can only fit a fibre channel PCIe card in expansion slot 1 as it is too long to fit in slot 2 which is limited to 6" long cards. I've seen that Atto do PCIe SCSI cards but there is no mention on their site about whether they will fit/work in slot 2 of an Xserve and emails to them have gone unanswered.
If anyone has any info on this, or could point me in the direction of the info, I would be very grateful. Or if what I want isn't possible, ideas on how to back up a 7TB array without direct attached tape storage would also be appreciated.

Actually, having just looked at the store, Apple
don't seem to offer any PCIe SCSI cards, just a PCI-X
one with a PCI-X riser. Would this configuration stop
me using a PCIe card in slot 2?
Avoid the Apple BTO SCSI card like the plague. It's junk.
It's really a rebranded LSI Logic 22320. Ours never worked
right in our Xserve G5; we replaced it with an ATTO UL4D and
all of our problems went away. The right card for the intel
Xserve is the ATTO UL5D or UL5D low profile (both are PCIe).
Link is here:
http://www.attotech.com/hostadapter.html
The Apple-rebranded LSI Logic 22320 sits on a shelf gathering
dust.
Russ
Xserve G5 2.0 GHz 2 GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.8) Apple Hardware RAID, ATTO UL4D, Exabyte VXA-2 1x10 1u

Does the original Xserve Raid (2003) support 750Gb drives.

Is the latest firmware compatible with the original Xserve Raid, thus supporting 750Gb discs?
Thanks in advance.

Hi
Short answer is yes. Refer to this Article:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1219
Tony

Partition recommendations under RAID 5 in Intel Xserve

So I am preparing for a new OS X server installation on an Xserve Intel with (3) 2 TB volumes to be setup in RAID 5. Our budget would not allow the addition of an SSD drive. I would like to have two volumes under RAID 5: (1) our boot volume with OS and (1) our data and sharepoints. It would be nice to keep the OS separate from my sharepoints in case I need to do a reformat and reinstall.
Our current server setup has a RAID 1 mirrored boot volume on a G5 with an XServe RAID 5 array (all one volume unpartitioned). I also have a second FireWire hard drive connected that I use to maintain a bootable clone of our boot volume.
On our new Xserve Intel with RAID 5, is there a way to have (2) partitions under RAID 5: (1) a 150 GB boot volume and (1) an approx 3.85 TB volume that will contain all of our sharepoints. Since our server is still in transit, I do not have a machine on hand I can experiment with.
Would you create two partitions on each hard drive then join each to their respective RAID 5 array so you have two volumes—one for the OS and one for the sharepoints?
Or, with RAID 5, would it be better to keep the array as one single volume and keep the OS and sharepoints all on the same volume without any partitions? My preference would be to keep it as stable a setup as possible? Obviously, if we were to keep the OS and sharepoints as one volume, I could image the OS installation once it is stable (and without the sharepoints) and keep the image on hand just in case I needed to revert to it in case of a problem.
What would you recommend?
Thanks!

Yes, you can partition the drives as you want. The only practical way to do this is to use hardware RAID to create the RAID 5 volume with all three disks, then use Disk Utility to split this array into two partitions.
You're not going to gain much benefit from this, though. The main advantages of using different volumes for OS vs. data is for performance reasons, but you lose that here since a) you're using RAID 5 and b) all your data is on the same physical disks anyway.
About the only thing you gain is a guard against the data volume growing to the point it consumes all space on the drives and hoses your OS (because the OS is on a different volume) or vice versa, but that's a small benefit IMHO.
As for disk failure, you're no better off with partitioning than you would be with a single partition for both data and OS - either way a single disk failure will be handled by the hardware RAID card until the disk is replaced, and all your data (both OS and Data) is equally protected/at risk either way.
So my recommendation would be to use RAID 5 across all disks and be done with. No further partitioning is necessary. It is, however, your server, and you can run it however you prefer
As for the stability issue - don't bother with a disk image - it'll be outdated before you blink and will be a PITA to keep up to date.
The easier option is to create a directory for all your sharepoints and just manage your backups such that this directory is excluded from your OS backups, and included in your data backups.

Does Xserve Raid 3.5 TB supports HD uncompress?

Does exist any configuration for Xserve Raid 3.5TB 7 drives, that supports HD Uncompress 720p 10 bit video formats?
Will I get that only with 14 drives?
Can I get that with 8 drives? 4 drives in each controller.
Thanks
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6) Final Cut Pro 5.1.1, Aja Kona LH

What's the data rate -- how many frames per second?
A common list is on the Xsan page:
http://www.apple.com/xsan/videoworkflow.html
I'd say if you're at 24 or 30 FPS:
720p 24fps 46MBps
720p 30fps 50MBps
You would be okay with 7 drives in half an Xserve RAID. If you need more than that, you'd need 14 drives.
If you're doing 1080i uncompressed, definitely you need all 14 drives striped in a RAID 50.

Intel xserve with hardware raid. Volume not mounting but drives show good

So this morning we came in and found that our intel xserve with the hardware raid is not booting.
Booted from OS X Install DVD and Raid Utility shows the Raidset good and all drives good.
Open disk utility and no volume form the raid will show up.
ANY IDEAS!??!

New information.
So out of the blue the Volume decided it needed to run an initializing run.
Apple care says I have to just wait until its done and see if the volume mounts.
Very strange since everything was green (good) until just then.
UPDATE:
Next day, the initializing has finished and now the Volume says (good) but the Raid Set is now "in transition". Applecare says I have to just wait till its done and see if the volume mounts.

Intel Xserve and kernel panic on high I/O load

Hi everyone,
Having added our 1st Intel Xserve to our server farm for test purposes we have encoutered several kernel panics on high I/O loads to Xsan volumes and standalone Xraid's.
Below is a portion of the system.log after restart.
The amusing part of this is that the crash reporter that suposed to log the reason for the crash crashed itself.
I was trying to use the new Xserve as a backup server but even with about 20% load on all 4 processors it will panic and restart.
Verdict: absolutley unreliable and useless if you need your Xserve to shuffle a lot of data around. The kernel drivers for the Apple FC card has also been changed which caused problems with our Archiware Presstore backup software.(kernel panic)
Looks like Apple is tampering with the multi core kernel of 10.4.8 on the Intel Xenon Processors at the moment and hasn't got it right yet. Well, we got one revision left to get this fixed before 10.5 comes out and that's still miles away from being usuable to say the least.
Thank you Apple, for selling your latest products that don't work as usual.
Any comments of similar experiences are welcome.
Dec 15 11:33:24 stansted /System/Library/CoreServices/Crash Reporter.app/Contents/MacOS/Crash Reporter: FIXME: IOUnserialize has detected a string that is not valid UTF-8, "¨”^X^F¨”^X^F".
Dec 15 11:33:24 stansted /System/Library/CoreServices/Crash Reporter.app/Contents/MacOS/Crash Reporter: kCGErrorInvalidConnection : CGSGetNextEventRecord: Invalid connection
Dec 15 11:33:24 stansted /System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/MacOS/loginwindow: Login Window Application Started
Dec 15 11:33:25 stansted crashdump[508]: Crash Reporter crashed
Dec 15 11:33:25 stansted loginwindow[507]: Login Window Started Security Agent
Dec 15 11:33:25 stansted crashdump[508]: crash report written to: /Users/serveradmin/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Crash Reporter.crash.log
Dec 15 11:33:29 stansted ARDAgent [521]: ******ARDAgent Launched******

While I have found a few problems as well, I have gotten the intel xserve fairly stable (it did take a while and a lot of apple support calling)
I haven't had kernal panics, but I haven't been able to get the processors above 45% when doing compression. Also, I had some nasty lun masking problems with the fibre card which did result in corrpution of a HFS raid volume.
On the topic of xsan and the intel xserve, it is a BAD idea to try to install anything prior to 1.4.0. Had hangs, crashes and even corruption of the serial licensing daemon. Installing 1.4 and upgrading to 1.4.1 was a huge fix to those issues.
Overall, after a lot of work, it is working well, and does play back 100MB/s video extremely well off an xsan volume. Although, I would be fully content if I could get compressor's utilization of the CPU from 40 to 100%.

Intel Xserve kernel errors

when I use java threats on intel Xserve cause this a kernel panic (interlock timeout for mutex)
I can reproduce Is problem with a simple java script ( see below)
Has anybody the same problem or a solution for this problem ?
how to test
save script as MutexSimulator.java and run
# javac MutexSimulator.java
# java MutexSimulator
result : the server gives a kernel error.. and reboots
public class MutexSimulator implements Runnable
public static int nSimultaneousProcs = 0;
protected Thread runner;
MutexSimulator()
nSimultaneousProcs++;
runner = new Thread(this);
runner.start();
public void run()
try
Runtime rt = Runtime.getRuntime();
Process p = null;
try
p = rt.exec(new String[]{"ls","-al","/"});
p.waitFor();
catch(Exception e)
System.err.println("Exception "+e.getMessage());
if(p!=null)
p.destroy();
catch(Exception e)
System.err.println("Exception "+e.getMessage());
nSimultaneousProcs--;
public static void main(String [] args)
int nProcsInQueue = 0;
while(true)
if(MutexSimulator.nSimultaneousProcs<200)
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
try
Thread.sleep(50);
} catch (InterruptedException e)
System.err.println("Exception "+e.getMessage());
//System.out.println("Running "MutexSimulator.nSimultaneousProcs" processes.");
public class MutexSimulator implements Runnable
public static int nSimultaneousProcs = 0;
protected Thread runner;
MutexSimulator()
nSimultaneousProcs++;
runner = new Thread(this);
runner.start();
public void run()
try
Runtime rt = Runtime.getRuntime();
Process p = null;
try
p = rt.exec(new String[]{"ls","-al","/"});
p.waitFor();
catch(Exception e)
System.err.println("Exception "+e.getMessage());
if(p!=null)
p.destroy();
catch(Exception e)
System.err.println("Exception "+e.getMessage());
nSimultaneousProcs--;
public static void main(String [] args)
int nProcsInQueue = 0;
while(true)
if(MutexSimulator.nSimultaneousProcs<200)
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
new MutexSimulator();
try
Thread.sleep(50);
} catch (InterruptedException e)
System.err.println("Exception "+e.getMessage());
//System.out.println("Running "MutexSimulator.nSimultaneousProcs" processes.");
}

While I have found a few problems as well, I have gotten the intel xserve fairly stable (it did take a while and a lot of apple support calling)
I haven't had kernal panics, but I haven't been able to get the processors above 45% when doing compression. Also, I had some nasty lun masking problems with the fibre card which did result in corrpution of a HFS raid volume.
On the topic of xsan and the intel xserve, it is a BAD idea to try to install anything prior to 1.4.0. Had hangs, crashes and even corruption of the serial licensing daemon. Installing 1.4 and upgrading to 1.4.1 was a huge fix to those issues.
Overall, after a lot of work, it is working well, and does play back 100MB/s video extremely well off an xsan volume. Although, I would be fully content if I could get compressor's utilization of the CPU from 40 to 100%.

XServe and XServe Raid Configuration

Hello Community,
I have taken over IT for a photography company. We deal with huge amount of data (3 GB files) on a daily basis. We are running a FMP database too.
We are trying to upgrade some of the computers to Snow Leopard since we are running old software (hopefully Lion by the end of the year). We have to upgrade in stages since we are still running G5 servers with Tiger and FMP 6.
We have:
* G5 Server and 1 Node
* Intel Server (2008) and Intel Server (2009) (NEW)
* 3 Xserve RAID (1-NEW)
Just found out that Xserve RAID only uses Ethernet for admin and that the extra port is redundant. This frees up ports on our switch since we have been plugging them all in on the same network.
Currently
* Server 1 plugs into RAID 1 using fiber cable (both ports) also runs FMP server and our FTP
* Node plugs into RAID 2 using fiber cable (both ports)
NEW
* Intel server 1 plugs into RAID 3 using fiber cable (both ports) (Not turned on yet)
We know XServe RAID only supports 2Gb/s fiber channel. Is that 1Gb/s per cable?
Does anyone know of a better way of configuring this server layout?

To join, or bond your ethernet ports, you need to delete your separate network interfaces in System Preference and create a new link aggregate interface. This article is for 10.6 but the theory is the same in other versions of Mac OS X and Server:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=ServerAdmin/10.6/en/asa7873dc0.html
You will need to configure your switch with a LACP port bond as well. As dawendt has mentioned - if your network is based on 10/100 switches then making a 2Gbps link aggregate on your XServe won't help.

Xserver RAID options

I just purchased an Intel xserve with three 750 GB drives, and see there was no hardware RAID option. I would be OK with just mirroring 2 of the 750s, and keeping the 3rd as a spare, but during setup, it just assumed I wanted to install the OS on one drive, without a mirror.
OK fine. I then went into disk utility, and figured I could just add a second drive as a mirror. I have set up software mirrors on Windows servers, and the is an option to "add this volume as a mirror". Is there a way to do this?
Also, I would like to know how you have all set up your servers. Have you just used a single drive for your OS? I am just not comfortable doing this. If, not, what have you done?
TIA for any suggestions!
Enio

I am a new Xserve user and I am of the opinion that Apple could do more to explain:
1 - the RAID limitations of Xserve and
2 - the limitations of the 'free' 90 day support.
In both cases it is either difficult or impossible to obtain this information prior to purchase!
An Apple support person agreed with me that they could do more to assist those who want to use the OS X soft RAID rather than let them discover after a few hours playing that they should have ignored the instructions supplied and formatted two disks as RAID 1 and then installed everything afresh from the CD.
I decided to spend a little longer and reformat with Disk Utility and got RAID 1 working although there are a few holes in the instructions - ie which of the various icons should one click on!
Others may wish to see the following technical reply from Apple:
"I cannot give you any information if there will be a hardware raid option in the future. However I found a method to create a mirror without destroying the contents of the source disk. It requires the command-line however. You can use the command diskutil with the option enable raid. http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/diskutil .8.html A step by step guide can be found here: http://www.afp548.com/article.php?story=20040827122302975 Your support contract does not cover command-line assistance but you could purchase a support agreement for £455."
Xserve Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Mac Pro + XServer RAID + FCP2 + Configuration

Hello all. This is my first post here.
I will soon buy a MacPro por video editing on Final Cut Pro 2 and I was wondering if you could help sort out if the configuration I've chosen is the best.
I'll show you the configurations I thought first:
*Mac Pro*
- Two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
- 4GB (4 x 1GB)
- Mac Pro RAID Card
- 2 x 500gb HDD
- ATI Radeon X1900 XT
- 20" Apple Cinema Display + 23" Apple Cinema HD Display
- Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCIe
*XServer RAID*
- 2000GB ADM (4x500GB Ultra ATA)
- Cache Battery Back-up Modules
- Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCIe
My idea:
A) The MAC Pro I'll be used for 3D rendering and video editing. I'll configure the 2x500GB with RAID1 (mirroring) for a fail safe env, leaving my with 500GB of available space
B) XServer RAID will be connected directly to the Mac Pro (for now) via the fiber optic cards and we'll provided additional storage.
C) For projects stored on the XServer RAID (videos for example) I must be able to access and edit directly with FCP2 without having to pass it to the Mac Pro
D) I was thinking of using RAID5 for XServer RAID configuration leaving me with 2.64 x 500GB (as described on support faqs) = 1.3 TB of disk space with a reasonable fail safe environment (RAID5 with 3 drives allows one drive to fail and offers a good recovery rate).
OK. My questions:
1) Is my MacPro config enough for FCP2 + 3D Rendering ?
2) Can I use the XServer RAID directly with Mac Pro or do I need aditional software / hardware?
3) Can I connect the fiber optic from one board to the other without using the router? (on google the answers I found were very vague...)
4) Is the RAID5 the best choice (in terms of performance vs data recovery) for video editing. The RAID5 specs states that random writes to disk are slower that other RAID configs. Is RAID 50 (5+0) a better choice?
5) I opted for the 4 HDD config on XServer but I could change to a 7 HDD config for a similar total space.
I'm sorry for the long post, but I can't find anywhere suitable information about this questions.
Hope to hear from you.
Thanks in advance!

We have a ton of Xserve's and Xserve RAID's at my work. As of right now they're all directly connected to our servers with Fibre Channel cables (NOT fiber optic, totally different animal.) We finally just bought our first Fibre Channel switch to hookup five 10.5TB RAIDS and a huge tape loader for backups. The RAID's work perfectly when directly connected and are very fast. The only reason that you would need a Fibre Channel switch is if you want multiple machines to be able to access the array without using network shares.
I really don't think that just four drives will give you the performance that you're looking for. In order to get good performance out of a RAID5 you NEED as many spindles as you can get. If you're stuck to a budget if would probably go to smaller drives but get more of them. I think you've already discovered this but if you want to do a RAID5+0, you'll need to populate drives on both sides of the RAID as they are physically seperated.
As far as I know, you can only get Xserve RAID Drive Modules from Apple as they do some pretty intensive testing on every drive before they ship. You can't even buy empty modules, you can buy blanks but they don't include the required electronics.

Clarification on how to use Xserve Raid and Fibre Channel without xsan.

First let me apologize for not responding earlier to your response, I tend to get busy and then forget to check back here.
Tod, the answer to your question is No, only one computer is accessing the xserve raid files at any one time and that is via Fibre Channel. However I do have the xserve raids set up as share points via ethernet.
Maybe I should turn that off and only access the files with the one computer that can connect via fibre channel.
I never thought of that. I will try that while I await for your answer, thanks again.
Todd Buhmiller
I have the following setup:
Xserve: 2x2Ghz Dual Core Intel Xeon, 5Gb of Ram, Running 10.5.8 Leopard Server
Xserve Raid with firmware version 1.5.1/1.51c on both controllers, and
Qlogic Sanbox 5600
Apple Fibre Channel Cards in Xserve, and Mac Pro Tower; Apple 2 Port 4Gbs Fibre Channel Card
Mac Pro Tower-Quad Core Intel Xeon 2.8Ghz, 16Gb of Ram, Running Snow Leopard 10.6.4
Here is the problem.
The directory for the xserve raids keep getting corrup, and I use disc warrior to rebuild them. Is there a way to keep the directories from getting corrupt? I am a few pieces of equipment before I can build an Xsan as that is the ultimate goal, but until then, I just need to be able to have the raids funciton as storage without having to rebuild the directories all of the time.
Anybody have any suggestions?
Thanks
Todd Buhmiller
Widescreen Media
Calgary, Alberta Canada
Tod Kuykendall
Posts: 1,237
From: San Diego
Registered: Oct 11, 2000
Re: Xserve Raid Mounts, Corrupt Directory tired of rebuilding directory
Posted: Jun 27, 2010 1:25 PM in response to: Todd Buhmiller
Are multiple computers accessing the same data on the RAID at the same time?
If so then NO. This is the source of your data corruption and I'm surprised if you were able to get all your data back every time if this is how you've been running your system. Each fibre channel assumes it has full and sole control of every volume it has mounted, no data arbitration is practiced and data corruption will occur if this assumption is wrong.
The only way this set-up will work is to use partitions or LUN masks so the volumes are accessed by one computer at any time. As long as one computer relinquishes control before another mounts it you will dodge arbitration issues but this is a dangerous game. If you screw up and mount an already mounted volume - and there is no easy way to tell if a volume is mounted - corruption will then occur. Sharing data simultaneous at fibre speeds is what XSAN does and to do this you need it.
HTH,
=Tod
Intel Xserve, G5 XServes, XRAID, Promise

+The xserve raids will mount automatically to any computer that I connect the qlogic fc switch to+
This is source of the corruption to your data. Any computer that attaches to a drive/partition via fibre channel assumes that it alone is in control of the drive and data corruption is inevitable.
+Is that the issue, should I disconnect the xserve from the fc switch and leave it connected via ethernet?+
Short answer: YES. The ethernet connections are fine because the server is controlling the file arbitration through the sharing protocol. Fibre channel connections assumes complete control over the partition and no arbitration of the file access is performed. It's like two people independently driving trying to drive the same car to different locations.
Depending on your set-up it is possible for the two machines to see and use different parts of the Xserve RAID storage but they cannot access the same areas without SAN doing the arbitration.
Hope that's clear,
=Tod

Intel Xserve RAID Support?

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